While the rest of the industry obsessed over John Lewis' "Man on the Moon" last Christmas, "Justino" quietly went about its business—with a touching animated short about a night watchman at a mannequin factory who never gets to meet his day-timer co-workers. In an attempt to create a bond, he poses mannequins in fun scenarios as a way to greet them each morning. But when he sees news that the company had set up a lottery pool without him—and won—he's heartbroken. You have to see what happens next for yourself.

While brilliant even as just an online video, "Justino" took social sharing a leap further than most such promotions—even John Lewis' acclaimed holiday campaign.

According to Libris, the Spanish national lottery set up social media accounts specific to the #Justino campaign, with content optimized for each channel. In one, viewers could comment on their favorite scenes. In another, they could guess at key elements of the story line. In all, viewers were brought into the story even while becoming viral engines for it.

It was exactly this kind of finely crafted digital storytelling that inspired its Cannes win, according to reports in Ad Age.

"Is filmmaking a uniquely human skill? Can a film made by a machine move you?"

That's the question posed by the team behind Saatchi & Saatchi's "New Directors' Showcase" at Cannes.

The result: "Eclipse," which was conceived, directed and edited by Hollywood's future android overlords. To be clear: There's a lot of human talent at work here. And the video is a music video—which by the very nature of music carries emotive power.

But make no mistake: Tomorrow's blockbusters will no doubt depend on this kind of AI—for better or worse. Still, if this is any indication, there's hope it's more of the former. Or maybe it just signals better computer-human collaboration. If the AI will put up with us. See the YouTube video above, read more here, and don't miss this year's human-created "Showcase" entrants, here.

The news from Cannes today found campaigns winning big for being particularly offbeat—risky even—with considerable success.

First was word that REI won the Promo & Activation Grand Prix for the "ultimate 'anti-promotion.'" That would be the whole #OptOutside campaign from last November, which involved shutting the store during Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year.

And the Swedish Tourism Board won the Direct Marketing Grand Prix for 'The Swedish Number,'" which gave prospective tourists the ability to dial a special number to play a kind of chat roulette with a random Swede in order to get the 411 on reasons to visit (see YouTube video above).

According to early reports from Skift, these randomized ambassadors signed up for the chance to talk about everything from the Northern Lights and IKEA, to ABBA and H&M, with total strangers.

According to Ad Age, REI isn't saying how successful the #OptOut initiative was, though sales for the full year were up nearly 10%.

It's a little harder to figure out why the Tourism effort won in the Direct category—it's unclear what made it a direct marketing effort—let alone how much new tourism it inspired.

It'd be hard to quantify that anyway. But in its first day or so, we do know the campaign generated 2,300 calls, mostly from Turkey (68% of the calls, in fact), the US (20%), UK (6%) Germany (2%) and Austria (2%).

And let's face it, it is a great example of an On-Demand Brand. Hell, it made us want to call a random Swede.

I recently read a joke somewhere that when it comes to email marketing, you want to be a puppy dog in a room full of llamas. Because hey, everyone loves puppies and who wants to get spit at by a llama?

In the conclusion of my recent conversation on the Jim Blasingame Show, we talk about striving for relevance and relationship-nurturing in your email marketing.

We also discuss the importance of sending content your customer is interested in, instead of always and exclusively pushing for a sale—or what Jim calls "contribute first, contact second."

Along the way, we have a few laughs about one my current favorite email marketers, weekend clothing brand Chubbies.

The fact is, email marketing is a lot different than it was 10 years ago—or even two years ago.

Mobile is the name of the game, which means responsive design plays an important role. According to YesMail, open rates for responsive and standard email formats are about the same. But click through rates for email messages shown in a responsive format are much higher.

But with email marketing resurgent, it's important to look beyond the clicks to building lists and structuring nurture tracks. So in part two of my recent appearance on the Jim Blasingame show, we talk about list strategies and, and the do's and don'ts a trend that can be as awesome as it is irritating: email subscription pop-overs.